I don't know any victim of religious authority sexual abuse who doesn't share the dilemma that the abuser was "all mighty". . . . Therefore, when an abuser of this status, stature, and authority sexually violates a child or vulnerable adult, it is incomprehensible by the abused. But most devastating is the decapitation from our own spirit or soul that comes with religious authority sexual abuse.

—Dr. Jaime J. Romo

This is not a pleasant subject, especially for those of us who have deep, personal attachments to the Christian faith. But we dare not avoid the subject, for the abuse of children in the name of religion may well be the most significant reason for why they leave the faith when they are old enough to do so. We must ask ourselves: Who can blame them? Why should they not abandon the scene of their silent torment?

—Donald Capps, The Child's Song

Like many dynamic institutions, religion can be a source of great evil or unparalleled good. When we grasp God's grace -- or better, when we discover that we have been grasped by that grace -- it makes all the difference for us, and for our children.

—Mark Galli

A connected and educated populace . . . is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain..

—Steven Pinker

This groundbreaking work can help bring us to a new religious moment in which the world's faith traditions uphold the sanctity of the child. . . . The time is ripe for a new covenant with humanity's children, one by which we respect their personhood and honour their
own hearts and minds.